Honeymoon Book - New Orleans Chapter

I have been working on a book for Theo's and my honeymoons.  But, I may have said this already.  Anyway, I'm almost done with our New Orleans section and I wanted to share a few of my favorite pages I've made for this one.  These are just a few...not the whole thing.

I made a lot of pages for our day at the aquarium.  For all the aquarium pages, I used the same background to tie it all together.  For this page, I could not find a frame for the pictures that I liked for this page....So I made one.  I used a "ribbon" to piece together in a hexagon frame and put the pictures together in a random shape.  I spelled aquarium with individual silver/scroll letters and used a "marble" to fill in blank space.

The next page is a few of our pictures we took with the animal figures throughout the aquarium.  It was fun to just be silly.  We had many more pictures of these poses, but I had to select a few...

For this page, I found a cute scroll frame to stagger the pictures.  A zig-zag ribbon cuts the page in half.  On the right half of the page, I placed a blue note page with curled corners on two corners.  I used a staple embeleshment to create the image that I stapled the two corners that are not curled up.  On the note I added a text box to create the caption, "The Kid in Me!"  I thought it was an appropriate caption since we were truly enjoying the aquarium as a child would.

The last aquarium page I'll share...I promise.  This one displays a few pictures of Theo "playing" in the aquarium and one picture of us in the shark jaw.  Theo was funny when he was petting the skark.  He was so scared!  I'm sure he kept putting his hand in and pulling it out fast before he could touch it.  When he finally touched it, he couldn't believe the texture.

I matted these pictures with a gel shape I found that had a border that matched the background but the main part of the shappe was a bright contrast. I used blue gel letters to spell "explore" but the letters blended with the background too much.  So I put a sheer rectangle behind it to make the letters pop.  I used a tweed bow at a diagonal on the page to make it appear that the date tag is being held in place by the tail of the bow. 

This page marks the end of the aquarium section of the scrapbook.

The last page I'll share today is from our visit to the children's museum.  We enjoyed this but decided that this will be more fun to come back to once we actually have children.

For this page, I used a background similar to the matting on the last page of the aquarium section.  I did this because we went to this museum the same day.  So, I wanted some element to tie these pages together.  I used a stitching element to make it appear that the "bar" of photos was sewn on to the page.  I used individual multicolor felt letters to spell the title.  It bothered me a little that the randomness of the colors created a pattern in the word "museum" but was completely random in the word "children's."  However, I did not change the colors because I liked the character of it all and if it were real elements, I wouldn't be able to.  So, I left it as is for "authenticity."  I finished the page with a "gift tag" explaining our visit.

Enjoy,

Hodge Podge of Pages

The next 3 pages I made for our scrapbooks are random pages.

The first page I made was in memory of the snow Louisiana received on February 12, 2010.  Theo and I went to my mom's to enjoy the snow because he had to go to work that day.

To make this page I used a simple 3 photo idea.  I pused all the photos to the right of the page.  I liked the idea of separating two landscape photos with one portrait photo.  I embellished the photos with two snow flakes and a ribbon placed on top.  I used individual lettering on the left to identify the snow day.  I used an ice blue background to keep the wintery feel.

The next page I made was for a dinner and game night we had in February of 2011.  Our friend Mullins came to visit.  Theo made us African peanut chicken sauce to make into lettuce wraps.  After dinner we went to another friend's house to play Apples to Apples and The Game of Things with a few more friend.  A good time was had by all!

The layout for this page was set on a diagonal.  I used a retro circle background that just gave me the feel of a 70's dinner party.  I used a chalk board and a chalky color font to create the "menu."  I cornered it with bow embellishments in the corners to dress it up.  The two pictures I used were matted on a mustard colored floral mat.  I used gold brads to "tack" them down.  Two black and white elegant ribbons border the photos.

Last, I am working on a special book for Theo and my honeymoons.  That's right.  We got two.  Since I only got 3 days off for the wedding, we went on a "mini"honeymoon to New Orleans before taking our real honeymoon to Seattle over New Year.  This page is from the first day we were in New Orleans, the day after our wedding.  We just wanted to walk and find new things.  Well, we did.  We found a little block that had a bunch of VERY neat sculptures.  So, of course we played on them.

This is a pretty simple page.  I just found a random, fun background.  I randomly angled and placed the photos.  I really did not have much of a reason for the placement of any of them.  I used individual "pepple" lettering to note that we were at, what we called, the Sculpure Park.  I randomly staggered and waved the letters to keep with the random feel of the page.  I really like the way the letters are overlapped.

First Two Pages - For Theo

So, The first two pages I've made are really for Theo.

The first one is in memory of his Citizenship Ceremony in July 22, 2010.  He was very excited when he saw it.  It's pretty simple with small pictures in 3 of the 4 corners with a tweed bow.  The intentions behind the bow is to make it look like it is the bow that is attaching the picture to the page.  Same with the buttons on the text strip in the 4th corner.  The larger middle picture is "being held in place" with metal looking photo corners.

This day was a special day for us.  Theo became a United States citizen.  He was qualified for citizenship because of the 5th anniversary of him receiving his green card.  Just goes to show, you can become a citizen the legal way, with no help of marriage.

I got a little more creative with the second page I've made.  Theo hasn't seen this one yet because I just made it today.  It is to celebrate our 1st Wedding anniversary on October 23, 2010.  We went to the old state capitol and had a picnic on the levee.  It was a lot of fun and a nice way to spend the day.

This page has a 4 picture layout displayed at an angle.  I used a green round frame to "hold" all 4 photos.  In the middle I used individual letter stamps to note that is was our 1st anniversary.  From the second "n" I hung a ribbon/charm embellishment for "flair."

I must say, if any one is interested in doing digital scrapbooking, it is very VERY much fun!  I haven't spent any money on embellishments and I have a pretty large collection so far.  I have to stress the website, Digitals.  This is a site where everyday you dowload a piece of a kit for free until it builds the whole kit.  In addition, there is a section for sample downloads.  For free you can download samples of a few elements each.  They're not large, but they're free and there are a lot to choose from.  Check it out!!

A Return to an Old Hobby

So, way back when, I used to have a full version of Photoshop and I would create digital scrapbook pages.  I really enjoyed this, however, when I got a new computer, I couldn't find my Photoshop software to load it and none of my scrapbook elements made the transfer.

Yesterday I discovered Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/).  It is basically a free software download that does basically what Photoshop does....but it's free.  You can even get free brush downloads, something I haven't done....yet.

Today I hit up some digital scrapbooking sites to see what kind of free elements I could score.  I hit the MOTEHRLOAD!!!!  I spent the morning downloading kits and organizing elements in a way that made sence to my hyper-OCD mind.  I have folders, subdivided into folders.  Haha.  But I'm excited to begin creating pages!  But first, I wanted to share my favorite kits I downloaded.  I am just sharing my favorites; not all of the kits.  Keep in mind, the pictures are a compilation of every element included in the kit.

From Shabby Princess I got the following kits:

 

 

I actually got A LOT from Shabby Princess, but these are my favorites.

There are a lot of embellishments and alphabets I want to get from Free Digital Scrapbooking, but I haven't yet.  I got two of their mini-kits too.  One of them is below.  Also, if you sign up for the member newsletter, you get a members only download with each newsletter.  The download is a kit similar to the one here.

Also, if you sign up at Digitals, you get a free Welcome Kit as well as a daily download that will eventually be a complete scrapbooking kit.

Those are my favorites for now.  I can't wait to get to scrapbooking so I can share my pages here!